What systemic racism in Canada looks like — Transcript

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1. 0:08Canada has been really good at convincing itself and the world that the terrible
2. 0:14things that come out of colonization somehow didn't happen here.
3. 0:17There's no systemic discrimination, there's no system in Quebec.
4. 0:22Thank God that we're different than the United States.
5. 0:25Their denial is part of the system of systemic racism.
6. 0:30It's an inaccurate history.
7. 0:33This country was founded on systemic discrimination.
8. 0:35We don't talk about the origins where it
9. 0:40comes from, how our whole society is based on white male superiority.
10. 0:50Systemic racism is the normalizing of racism. It's not directly in your face.
11. 0:57Systemic racism is something that touches every corner of our country,
12. 1:01every corner of our institutions.
13. 1:03Commissioner Brenda Lucki said she
14. 1:05struggled with the term systemic racism. Later the commissioner said it does exist in the RCMP.
15. 1:10We definitely have that in the RMP and we are not immune to it at all.
16. 1:13These are institutions that were built
17. 1:17with the intention and the understanding that they were not really to service
18. 1:22people who are not white.
19. 1:23There are these myths that we are so radically different from the U.S.
20. 1:27Both countries are founded out of stolen and colonized land, both
21. 1:32countries have attempted genocide on Indigenous peoples, both countries have
22. 1:37long histories of slavery.
23. 1:39It's easy to point somewhere else and it's another form of gaslighting.
24. 1:43In Canada we talk a lot about you know the Underground
25. 1:47Railroad, Black people escaping slavery and coming to Canada. But we don't also
26. 1:52talk about how after the end of the Civil War in the U.S., that many of those
27. 1:56same Black people went back to the U.S. And why did they go back? Because on the
28. 2:02other side of the border, things were just as bad.
29. 2:05The police target and brutalize and kill Black and Indigenous people.
30. 2:07We're literally paying for police officers to brutalize and kill us at disproportionate rates.
31. 2:12One of the officers shot him dead. Moore was shot and killed by a police officer.
32. 2:21I don't understand how someone dies during a wellness check.
33. 2:25The family says the 29-year-old was alone in the unit with officers when she plunged to her death.
34. 2:33Inexplicably killed. Rodney Levi shot by RCMP.
35. 2:36The ones we see in the media now are just the most recent ones.
36. 2:38We've had hundreds and hundreds of cases of brutality and violence,
37. 2:43sexualized violence, killings that have never been addressed.
38. 2:47Let's look at the ways the structure has historically been used.
39. 2:52People who were enslaved would run away
40. 2:57because they were property, not only labour, they were labour and property.
41. 3:01Their masters, their owners would want them back and they would hire people to go
42. 3:05catch them. And police forces emerged out of that.
43. 3:10The whole purpose of the RCMP on
44. 3:12the Prairies specifically, but across Canada generally, was really to suppress
45. 3:18Indigenous dissent. They were also used to take children, put them into
46. 3:23residential schools, not follow up on complaints of the sexual abuse that was going on there.
47. 3:29Black and Indigenous people make up nearly 40% of our federal
48. 3:35prison population, while comprising less than 10% of the general population.
49. 3:40So much of the interpersonal stuff that happens between people, that policing is
50. 3:48now involved in, can be better handled in communities when communities are given
51. 3:53and have the resources to deal with interpersonal conflict.
52. 3:57A CBC News investigation two years ago found nearly half of Canadians who died in encounters
53. 4:04with police since the year 2000 were mentally distressed.
54. 4:08We are here to ask for the defunding of the police.
55. 4:10Over the past decade, police budgets have ballooned. You see an increasing militarization of
56. 4:19the police for a purpose that we don't understand.
57. 4:21So we need to spend money on
58. 4:23mental health workers and a health care response, not on sending the RCMP to
59. 4:28respond to a wellness check.
60. 4:30What defunding is asking us to do is to come
61. 4:33back to the table, examine our structures as they are, and ask: is this appropriate
62. 4:42for policing? It's about how do we get society to function, as a whole, better.
63. 4:51When you're looking at the way that cannabis rolled out in Canada,
64. 4:55it wasn't Black or Indigenous folks that were benefiting from this system, even
65. 5:00though we're disproportionately charged with those kinds of offences.
66. 5:01The system is created to produce advantage for people who are marked as white.
67. 5:05You see all these long line ups of university students, of all of these people who now
68. 5:15can go buy it recreationally, pretty much like they did before. I mean you're
69. 5:19talking about a very low arrest and conviction rate for white
70. 5:23people compared to Black and Indigenous.
71. 5:26When it transforms into the realm of the
72. 5:28legal, it's OK, the representation of it
73. 5:32becomes white and white people.
74. 5:34And then no real substantive justice for all of
75. 5:37those with criminal records for weed possession and some still in prison
76. 5:42today with weed charges and where is the justice in that?
77. 5:46And that is what we mean when we say that institutional racism is a part and parcel of all the
78. 5:53institutions, governing and non-governing of Canadian life.
79. 5:57We've come to a moment in our culture were to call someone racist is seen as more
80. 6:07offensive than the person's racism.
81. 6:09When we call it out, we get told that it
82. 6:12doesn't exist. We get told that we're being radical.
83. 6:15Jagmeet Singh, the first federal party leader of colour, called a Bloc
84. 6:20Québécois MP a racist, and when he wouldn't apologize, was ordered to leave
85. 6:26the chamber. It started with a motion on systemic
86. 6:29racism in the national police force.
87. 6:36Singh says it wasn't just a Bloc member's decision to oppose his motion on
88. 6:39systemic racism that angered him, but a gesture that accompanied it.
89. 6:40I looked back and I saw that MP not only say no, but make eye contact with me and just
90. 6:48kind of brush his hand, dismiss it. And in that moment, I got angry.
91. 6:52What Jagmeet Singh was saying to this person: you are actively engaging in upholding racist
92. 7:01systems. Thereby, by definition, you become racist.
93. 7:05Mr. Singh did the right thing in
94. 7:08analyzing the gesture, naming it for what it is, and naming the Minister for his
95. 7:15behaviour. Then the media focused all attention on Jagmeet,
96. 7:20who was kicked out of the House for refusing to apologize. Where's the focus
97. 7:26on the person who enacted the violence?
98. 7:29The Bloc's leader today said Singh owes
99. 7:32MP Alain Therrien an apology. Me or our team, our MPs, are anything but racist people.
100. 7:40So Mr. Singh became the problem. Not the minister with his dismissive gesture.
101. 7:45If our own leaders can't call it out and name it and hold people to
102. 7:52account in Parliament, what does that say for our ability to hold anybody else to
103. 7:58account and weed it out?
104. 8:00It has to be individual change, it has to be change in
105. 8:04policies, practices, it has to be systems change.
106. 8:08We are being offered lots of symbolism without any substance.
107. 8:13When I see the prime minister take a knee I think of it as a distraction. Here is the
108. 8:19leader of a middle power in the world who could do much to demonstrate what
109. 8:25moving towards anti-Black racism could look like and that's not what we're
110. 8:29being offered. We're being offered a knee.
111. 8:32I've disregarded the knee and blackface
112. 8:34just comes right back to my memory.
113. 8:37It was something that I didn't think was
114. 8:41racist at the time but now I recognize it was something racist to do and I am
115. 8:46deeply sorry.
116. 8:46We need to go beyond performance, which serves who? It doesn't
117. 8:52do anything for the victims of racism. So part of our work is for all of us to
118. 8:58become more self-aware about what it is we're asked to do. You don't have to be
119. 9:03a protester. There's a thousand different ways that people can contribute, but
120. 9:08silence is also violence. It may be writing to your boards of education and
121. 9:14asking them to take responsibility for changing curriculum to give a more
122. 9:21accurate history. If something's racist, we need to call it out.
123. 9:26And that's why Idle No More was so powerful, Wet'suwet'en Strong protests were so
124. 9:31powerful and these protests are so powerful, because it's Black and
125. 9:35Indigenous peoples and Canadians saying you've got to stop this. A Canadian
126. 9:41identity that would be worthwhile is an identity that begins to undo the myths
127. 9:47of Canada.